Tax Watch: Mamaroneck reval ends old inequities

Mar. 21, 2013

John Wolham, left, regional director, Southern Region, of the state Office of Real Property Tax Services speaks Wednesday at a panel talk on fair property-tax assessments at New Rochelle City Hall sponsored by the League of Women Voters. / Seth Harrison/The Journal News

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When a municipality makes the leap to embrace property-tax fairness through revaluation, winners and losers emerge as inequities in place — sometimes for decades — get rectified.

Mamaroneck property owners received their disclosure notices this month following the town’s first revaluation in 45 years. The rule of thumb – that one-third of properties see their assessed market value rise, one-third remain roughly the same and one-third go down – proved true in the diverse town along Long Island Sound, town Administrator Steve Altieri said.

The one-third that went down — with substantial tax savings to homeowners — tended to be in the town’s more moderate-priced neighborhoods, including those in the Village of Mamaroneck. The biggest increases came in parts of Larchmont, along the waterfront in Mamaroneck and Larchmont, and in Mamaroneck’s unincorporated section.

The stakes are high. Half of Mamaroneck’s homes have a market value over $913,000 and pay at least $20,000 annually in property taxes.

“What we are hearing from real estate agents is that the numbers are good,” Altieri told Tax Watch. “But there’s always sticker shock.”

One tax attorney said he had received calls from several Mamaroneck residents with the news. One guy in the Village of Mamaroneck saw his home’s assessed market value plummet from $510,000 to $405,000, saving him thousands in taxes. No case there. But the attorney’s talents appeared likely to be put to use by a Larchmont homeowner whose full-market-value assessment rose 73 percent to $1,990,000, with his tax liability projected at nearly $34,000.

In late February at a meeting on revaluation, former Mamaroneck Supervisor Caroline Silverstone acknowledged that the Town Board during her tenure had been “too chicken” to update assessment rolls, which were last done in 1968.

Instead, the town, like most in Westchester, relied on the state equalization rate, developed through an analysis of house sales townwide, which sets a property’s taxable value based on a percentage of the old assessment. This year in Mamaroneck, assessments were considered to be 1.74 percent of market value.

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At the February meeting, Silverstone applauded the board for bringing fairness to the town’s property-tax system. She learned what that meant for her home of four bedrooms, two baths, with 2,344 square feet of living space on a quarter-acre at 22 Glenn Road in Larchmont. The assessed market value rose 46 percent, from $775,862 to $1,129,000. Silverstone says she’d grieved her assessment in the past, and “it had dropped considerably.” Now it’s back up.

“I meant what I said at the meeting,” she says. “I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of work tweaking the numbers. But it’s closer to reality.”

Late Wednesday afternoon, homeowners whose assessments rose waited patiently at Mamaroneck Town Center to argue their case for a lower market value to representatives from Garr Associates, the company that earned $900,000 to carry out the revaluation.

An elderly gent with a U.S. Marines cap had done his research and was prepared to share his findings about his more modest home compared with the renovated ones nearby.

Another hopeful, Tracy Williamson, had bought a home in December on Rockingstone Avenue for about $200,000 less than the assessed value of nearly $1.3 million set in the revaluation.

“Hopefully it will be corrected,” she said.

By proceeding with revaluation, Mamaroneck joined Rye town, Bronxville and Pelham with up-to-date assessments among Westchester’s 44 cities, towns and villages. Scarsdale expects to have its revaluation project completed next year. That leaves 39 communities with homeowners who have enjoyed decades of underassessment and lower taxes.

After speaking to Mamaroneck homeowners Wednesday, I drove down Route 1 to New Rochelle, where the League of Women Voters held a forum on revaluation with a panel that included Assessors Mark Russell and Edye McCarthy from Westchester’s two largest municipalities — Yonkers and Greenburgh, respectively — who want to revalue the properties in their communities.

Yonkers City Council and Greenburgh Town Board would have to approve the projects, and funding for them. Yonkers and Greenburgh expect to send a request-for-proposals to revaluation firms this spring, with up to 10 other municipalities considering joining in to get a lower group rate on the work. Let’s hope they do.

Under the current system, property owners can grieve their assessments before local boards of assessment review, and, if they aren’t happy, state Supreme Court. But that only addresses the inequity of those who pay too much. It does nothing to deal with the unfairness of the underassessed who have had their fair share paid by their neighbors, year after year, decade after decade.